Nabil Qassis has resigned from his position as Palestinian Authority finance minister as the PA continues to face a severe financial crisis.

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad announced Sunday that he has
accepted the resignation of his finance minister, Nabil Qassis.

Fayyad’s
announcement came during the weekly meeting of the PA cabinet in Ramallah.
Fayyad briefed the ministers on the content of Qassis’s letter of resignation,
but the letter was not released for publication.

Fayyad thanked Qassis
for his work, but did not say why the finance minister had decided to
quit.

Last weekend, the PA announced that its president, Mahmoud Abbas,
had rejected Qassis’s resignation and asked him to remain in his job. Qassis’s
resignation came as the PA government continues to face a severe financial
crisis, triggering a wave of protests and strikes by public
servants.

Officials said that Qassis’s resignation could be the result of
his dissatisfaction with recent agreements signed between the PA government and
various unions representing public servants.

Qassis, according to the
officials, believes that the PA government would not be able to fulfill its
financial pledges to its employees.

Palestinian economic expert Naser
Abdel Karim said that Qassis decided to resign because he does not believe that
he could meet the public’s expectations.

“The finance minister feels
embarrassed because he has not been able to improve the financial situation of
the Palestinian Authority,” Abdel Karim told the daily Al-Quds. He said that
another reason why the minister decided to quit was his failure to come up with
a new budget for 2013.

Another economic expert, Nafez Abu Baker, said
that Qassis decided to quit after realizing that his proposals to end the
financial crisis in the PA, such as cutting expenses and reducing bonuses for
public sector workers, had been opposed by many.